Here Kitty Kitty!

Mine liebe katze, sufera de matze, matze a pleznit, katze a murit.

(My dear cat, suffers from her intestines, her intestines burst, the cat died)

Harvesting the Sun

I just finished reading through an article about manure on NY times (see more here), and it got me thinking. With mankind's ability to streamline production of everything from Milk to Power, we have surpassed the stage of simply harvesting resources and building all we can with them. Yesteryear we afforded ourselves the luxury of not worrying about how our resources would renew themselves or how we would deal with the resulting garbage from our every day operations. Yet as we product and consume resources at an ever increasing rate, the question of what to do with all the leftovers from our operations becomes more pressing.

So far we have become very industrious at making the world into our image, a one way street where we find resources, build factories to harvest them, bring goods to market and move on to the next resource. This bold forward arrow to progress is being tempered by the realization that if we do not renew our resources and tie up all the loose ends of the production process, we are limiting our future growth. A fancy way to say we are degrading our environment, the very place we live and call home.

The cycle they described in the article above I found intriguing, if not practical. Manure from the dairy cows was used to fertilize the fields that grew their feed. They ate the feed to give them sustenance and produce milk, which we use. The sun makes it all work by growing the grass. And that is where I get to our title for this post.

The image I have in my head is of people who survive by harvesting the energy given off by the Sun. All our oil (old forests grown in sunlight millions of years ago), milk (cows <- grass <- sun), fresh water (evaporated by the sun) all work because of the feint wisps of power that make their journey from the Sun to our home impart to all the beings here an enormous amount of energy. As human beings we are seeking the best and most efficient way to harvest that energy, wether it be through vast tracts of grain and grazing land to feed cattle or thin film solar energy. I think in some way that makes us children of the Sun.

The children of the Sun Harvest the Sun to survive. How fitting.

Finding the New California

Recent surveys of the moon by the LCROSS revealed a good probability that ice does exist at the poles of the moon. Finding critical resources in space can propel our exploration visions forward, but have we really found White Gold?

When we first began cononizing the north american continent we had no idea what treasures and wonders could be found by traveling west. It was only after a long laborious trip west that we discovered california and the bounty that it could provide. We have a lucious firtile land here that provides fruits and food to feed the nation year round.

In the same grain I believe we need to find our california in space, which will allow us to extend our tenuous tendrils into the vacuum and build sustained outposts. Since space exploration is so difficult and expensive, we need to find an area rich with resources that we can exploit to really begin expanding our investments.

There are two ways that I see we can find resources close to home. Survey the moon till we find the best composition of resources for our needs or survey asteroids and then move them into an orbit that is close enough for us to reach atleast as easily as the moon.

Power Storage Technologies

Flywheels

Technology: Big spinning mass, high speed, low friction

In/Out Efficiency: possibly up to 90%

Pros: Stable throughout high temperature variations, excellent power delivery speed

Cons: vacuum required

Life Expectancy (Terrestrial): 20 years (Extraterrestrial): possibly 100 years

Hazards: broken equipment would release stored momentum catastrophically

Notes: rolling out across the North East and CA for power regulation

Applications: Power cycle Regulation,

Companies: Beacon Power, Hitech Power

Chemical (L-Cell)

Technology: This approach involves mixing reactive chemicals to provide higher charge efficiency than normal rechargeable batteries.

In/Out Efficiency: 60%

Pros: Stable throughout reasonable temperature variations. More can be explored by increasing hazardous nature of chemicals, 10,000+ cycle capable system.

Cons: Fluid may need to be replaced every 5 years, lifetime dependent on charge / discharge cycle, low power density (investigate)

Life Expectancy (Terra): 20 years (Extraterrestrial): possibly 27 years

Hazards: leaking chemicals may cause damage to living creatures

Notes: Several charge / discharge cycles per day terrestrial cycle, extraterrestrial 1 cycle per day

Applications: Remote cell phone towers, diesel generator support

Companies: Deeya Energy VC's - Ira Ehrenpreis [Video] Technology Partners & Ravi Viswanathan NEA 

Chemical (L-Ion)

Pros: Widely deployed and well understood technology

Cons: 455 cycles for Tesla roadster with maximum electronic optimization, 1000 cycles w/ 80% charge capacity for new MacBook Pros

Notes: Information from Apple information from Tesla

Companies: Most of em

Compressed Gas (Air)

Pros: Cycles last as long as storage tank maintains containment

Hazards: Compressed air at 4500 PSI would cause serious injury if the containment was breached 

Notes: MDI news article , read more about MDI Specs

Companies: MDI 

Interesting Government News Sources

Gov Energy News - current Government energy funding, policy changes and more

Interesting Space Missions

Quick Links:
JAXA ESA

Interesting ongoing space missions.


Kepler - Launched 2009, is searching for earth like planets and can detect a wide range of data from any planets that pass in front of their sun (the "transit" method). It can detect atmosphere temperature based on it's observations. Updated News Source

GRACE -Launched 2002, The two satellite join USA / Germany expedition to detect minute gravity changes on the earth. Updated News Source

SeaWinds on Midori 2 - Launched 2002, was capable of measuring sea winds via radar pulse backscatter. Stopped functioning shortly after achieving orbit. It is like having a billion ships at sea all taking wind measurements.

Hayabusa - Launched 2003, checked out the Itokawa asteroid and is on it's way back home, hopefully with samples. It should be back around June 2010. Updated News Source

Rosetta - Launched 2004, will check out the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. Updated News Source

Epoxi - Launched 2005, will check out comet Hartley 2 in November of 2010. Updated News Source

Dawn - Launched 2007, will visit the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. It will arrive at Vesta in a little less than two years (August - sept 2011, (Updated News Source

Chandrayaan-1 & Moon Mineralogy Mapper - Launched 2008, Updated News Source

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter - Launched 2009, will measure surface and subsurface temperatures on the moon in prep for renewed moon missions. Updated News Source

In Support of Space

I recently stumbled upon an IEEE Spectum magazine, (the issue from 6-09). I was surprised to find therein a number of pertinant concepts that I wanted to jot down. I will include the quote followed by my ideas on the concept.

"and a misguided belief that we must solve all our terrestrial problems before doing anything ambitious in space"
- I have friends that think like this, you know who you are. We will always have problems down here. That did not stop people from inventing the wheel.
"one thing that could redeem the moon as a steppingstone... Is if you could produce propellant on the moon to use in the rockets that went to mars"
- what part of rockets are a bad idea did you not understand? Neuks, do you speak!

"from their inception, US and Soviet apace agencies recognized the value in connecting with the public directly"
- an excellent idea. So let's stream all NASA video ops from space and inside the control rooms as well. I have an extra monitor. Work it out with stream cast or somesuch.

"in 2008 NASA authorization act ... Stipulates that the agency 'develope a technology plan to enable disemination of information to the public to allow the public to experience missions to the moon... By leveraging advanced exploration technologies"
- well said, so that stream cast network is up right?

Top answered to the survey of what would get you interested in and excites by Nasa: ... "having the ability to view what robots and astronauts are seeing in real time..."
- steamcast, do you speak it?!

"On short excursions, austronauts can loose up to 20% of their muscle mass; during multimonth missions, the figure can reach 50%."
- dammit, that is a large problem. Maybe it is time to start doing brain in the jar missions?

"chemical rockets are only marginally capable of getting people to Mara and back"
- neuclear propulsion, how I miss thee, by the time we realizes your potential, it had already been legislated away.

"researchers from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.. Built a magnetic shield in the lab that was able to block a beam of heavy ions and protons"
- why are we still talking about radiation problems? How long will it take for NASA to prove thus tech? Oh that's right, thus has been researched in reactor cores for tens of years.

"even the space shuttle isn't really reusable, in that it costs more per flight than it would to buy a new expendable launch vehical of greater cargo capacity"
- thanks for the hints elon. For the rest of you, rockets need to travel slower when leaving earth when that have people on board. Payload seperate from people is the way to go from a cash standpoint.


"the measurements also came from an additional array of 96 closely packed 3-micrometer microelectrodes that actually penetrated the skull"
- I have the sneaking suspicion that all branes really need to communicate from one brain to the other is a physical connection linking the. maybe this technology will be the start of that.

"[young people] go into engineering because they've had their imaginations fired by a grand, awe-inspiring challenge. A challenge like going to mars for example"
- I could not agree more. NASA's past triumphs inspired two generations of engineers that helped grow this country into the technical powerhouse it is today. awe-inspiring missions like actually trying to work a global space program can do this again. Or just capture an asteroid and put it in orbit. I think that would suffice as well.